Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of the Belgorod region, confirmed the fire in a Telegram post, saying the latest reports indicated no casualties. Gladkov wrote in the post that residents of the villages of Timonovo and Soloti, which Reuters reported are about nine miles from Ukraine, were evacuated to a “safe distance.” “Emergency services are at the scene and the cause of the fire is being investigated,” he added. Further details on the severity of the fire and the equipment stored inside the warehouse that caught fire were not immediately available. Belgorod is a region in western Russia whose administrative center is a city of the same name. In early July, when a series of explosions hit dozens of residential buildings in the city of Belgorod, the Kremlin claimed it was part of a deliberate effort by Ukraine to target Russian civilians, the BBC reported. Ukraine denied the charge and said Russia had lied about such incidents in the past. A Russian ammunition depot located about nine miles from the Ukrainian border caught fire on Thursday, forcing residents of two nearby settlements to evacuate, local authorities said. Above, a general view shows the Russian city of Belgorod on April 11, 2019. Vasily Maximov/AFP via Getty Images However, this was one of several cases of mysterious explosions and fires reported in Russian territory since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in late February. In late April, Russian state media reported that a Russian ammunition depot in Belgorod province burned in the early hours of the morning and the sound of explosions was heard. “At about 03:35 I woke up to a loud bang that sounded like an explosion. As I was writing this post, there were three more explosions,” Gladkov reportedly wrote on Telegram at the time. In a similar case in early May, explosions were heard in the sky over Belgorod. “A loud bang, similar to the sound of a medium-sized explosion, was heard in the center of Belgorod,” state news agency RIA Novosti reported at the time. Days later, local Belgorod officials posted on VKontakte, Russia’s equivalent of Facebook, that residents were awakened by the sound of explosions and alerted authorities to smoke coming from an area of a village called Dubovoye. Videos circulated on social media Thursday afternoon that some users, including Ukrainian government official Anton Gerashchenko, said showed a fire at a Russian ammunition depot in Belgorod. Newsweek was unable to independently verify whether the videos showed the same ammunition depot fire that Gladkov confirmed. Newsweek has reached out to the Russian and Ukrainian defense ministries for comment.
